There are some rental services that will offer installation of their equipment for a fee, but installing a party or lawn tent is fairly simple. Most rental companies are on call for troubleshooting help over the phone, and there are plenty of videos to help, so why not try the installation independently.

Most rental services can also rent any tools or equipment needed to install the tent. Companies such as Rental Center of Monticello have hammers and even banquet tables and chairs in their catalogues, so there’s no reason to be put off if you don’t have the right hardware.

First, unwrap the tent and spread it flat across the even ground you want to install it on. A stake should be hammered into the ground about two or three feet from a corner of the tent, aligned with one of the tent's edges.

A few feet directly out from a corner, hammer the stake in at a slight angle away from the tent. The rope attached to the corner of the tent makes a loop at the end. Place the loop over the stake. There is a second rope at the corner for a second stake.

The second stake needs to be a few feet out the other way from the corner, aligned with the first side's perpendicular side. Apply the two stakes in this manner at every corner of the tent. This way, when you raise the corner of the tent with a pole, the ropes will hold the pole in place with opposing forces. It would make a triangle if you drew a line from stake to stake to pole.

The bag of poles typically contains short and long poles. The short ones will connect and lock into the long ones to make them taller. One end of these poles will come to a bit of a thick point while the other will have a dark circular “foot” on the bottom. The point goes through a slit at the corner of the tent to hold the tent up.

Raise the pole and corner of the tent so you can put the foot of the pole onto the ground. Grind it into the ground just a bit for stability. The rope from the corner of the tent to the angled stake will tighten as you raise it from the ground. This helps keep the tent and poles up and stable.

Once you run all the poles through the corner holes of the tent and place the bottoms of the poles to the ground, all the corners should be raised off the ground. Next you will apply poles to the middles of the sides of the tent, between corners. These poles only need to be roped to one stake.

The center of the tent will still be drooping to the ground. The final pole to install is the center pole. It's taller than the others so it will typically have two smaller poles connect to it: one will connect to the center pole and then another will connect to the second pole.

You can identify the center pole because it wouldn't have a foot on one of the ends. It would only have the shaped top that will hold up the tent material. Once you've connected the other poles to the center pole, you simply attach the top through the hole in the very center of the tent. Raise the pole and balance onto the ground.